It takes more lean and less energy to the industry

February 28, 2018 by Chris Abernathy

Improve the energy efficiency of his plant, no one is against it. But how ? Where to start ? What is the gain? Industrialists are often in limbo. “However, we are witnessing a revolution,” says Jean-Pierre Riche, chairman of the consultant Okavango Energy, ” Energy is one of the levers of competitiveness, like quality in the 1990s.” Energy performance must be integrated into industrial management. ” With his Leanergy method, Okavango applies lean to energy. “It all starts with the product, we will eliminate any energy consumption, which does not bring value to the product,” explains Jean-Pierre Riche.

This approach, which involves an exhaustive audit and without prejudice, allows to question, if necessary, the process to better target waste. A dairy takes milk at 6 ° C to pasteurize at 80 ° C and skim it at 40 ° C. It is then cooled and stored at 6 ° C. When it needs to be turned into cheese, it is reheated to 40 ° C. “This intermediate step at 6 ° C, which costs energy to warm the milk, comes from a buffer stock, but it is useless for all the milk to be treated this way.” The buffer was reduced to a minimum and the essential milk now skips the stage to 6 ° C “ , explains Jean-Pierre Riche.

Better thinking about the product and its needs also causes a reversal of perspective, while energy efficiency actions usually go through the optimization of technical equipment. A boiler produces steam at 100-150 ° C to heat water at 60 ° C, used in a duck slaughter process. “Installing a smoke collector on the boiler would have improved its energy performance, with a good return on investment, but it would have been money lost since the product does not need steam. cost effective to replace the boiler with a heat pump heating the water to 60 ° C “, says Jean-Pierre Riche. Lean tools rely on the management of industrial sites. By relying in particular on the saturation of the capacities.

A method of industry to improve its energy performance

From the product.
Lean applied to energy has a basic principle: to eliminate any energy consumption that does not bring value to the product. An audit can identify the strict needs of the process and track down the quality and performance.Drive the change.
Maximizing energy performance requires a transformation of the company’s practices. The tools and the language of the lean allow to accompany it to put in place very profitable actions on the exploitation.

Measure the performance.
To carry out an action plan and sustain gains, it is necessary to measure the real energy performance of its production. Indicators based on 6-sigma principles isolate the influencing factors.

“We must try to saturate if possible the most energy-intensive equipment to maximize energy performance,” says Jean-Pierre Riche. This electrical contact manufacturer had two air dryers on all the time. “By analyzing consumption, capacity and needs, Okavango has shown that one of the two was mainly used for backup,” says the operations manager of the site , “now only one dryer remains on. Toggle allows you to use it when needed. ” In an agro-food site, four cold rooms were used without ever being saturated. After a reorganization of flows and storage, only two are now used.